“Perfect your beingness by going slowly through the routine of your life until you have it mastered. Do the ordinary things that make up your life. Learn to do those things to the point of mastery. You’ll find great satisfaction in them. Conduct your life from a place of quiet, calm loving. Get it perfected so that the routine of your life does not distract you or disturb you and so you can maintain a state of loving in everything you do. Then you can expand the scope of your activity, moving your loving heart out to others in a natural, ordinary way. Then you are just present with people, loving them. Living your life in an ordinary way can be the most tremendous service to your fellow man.”

Another great article from the zenhabits blog: 20 Small Actions to Create a Fit Environment. Leo Babauta talks about how to remove the barriers that get in the way of getting fit. It seems so easy to “go with the flow” and not make the changes needed to get healthy, even when we realize how important it is. I like Leo’s suggestions for simple things that break down the barriers (i.e., excuses).

Personally, the “I don’t have time,” excuse was the biggest one for me. I think, in a way, I resented spending time on exercise because it took away from “me” time. Except, “me” time was usually watching TV, reading, playing on the computer, etc. The big change for me was thinking of exercise time as “me” time, because it really is for me – in a much bigger way. Now, I get up at 4:30am every week day (later on weekends) to get in some exercise. That’s only about 30 minutes earlier than I was getting up anyway, but I’ve also been doing things the way Leo suggests – prepping for the morning, so I would have more time. I’m now able to run and do weight training four times a week, swim three times a week and do yoga twice a week. Since I can read or watch TV when running, I still get plenty of the traditional “me” time. (BTW, I’m not a safety hazard – I run on a treadmill! 🙂

This snippet was read by my yoga instructor at my last class. It was a good thing to help let go of junk from the day and focus on the present. I think it is good advice that I want to remember for work (among other things). A bit of Googling revealed the source – a book with the title “The Law of the Garbage Truck” by David J. Pollay.

The Law of the Garbage Truck

One day I hopped in a taxi and took off for the airport. We were in the right lane when suddenly a car jumped out of a parking space right in front of us. My taxi driver slammed on his brakes, skidded, and missed the other car by inches! The driver of the other car whipped his head around and started yelling at us. My taxi driver just smiled and waved at the guy.

I mean, he was really friendly. So I asked, ‘Why did you do that? This guy almost ruined your car and sent us to the hospital!’ Then my taxi driver taught me what I now call, “The Law of the Garbage Truck”.

He said some people are like garbage trucks. They run around full of garbage, full of frustration, full of anger, and full of disappointment. As their garbage piles up, they need a place to dump it and sometimes they’ll dump it on you. Don’t take it personally. Just smile, wave, wish them well, and move on.

This post at Zen Habits blog is certainly worth a read and I’m sure it has value for those interested in starting their own business. However, I would suggest that the freedom and value mentioned in the post can be applied equally well in a ‘traditional’ work environment. Why can’t you be your own boss, work for yourself, do what you want instead of what someone tells you to do in just about any workplace? Be your own boss of your career. Be ambitious and set goals that your boss can support. Doesn’t this mean you are doing what you want not what you’re told to do? If you don’t want to define the work and do it yourself (i.e., you have to be told), maybe you should look for another job.

Don’t get me wrong. I agree with and appreciate the points of the Zen Habits article. I just feel that the same ideas can be applied where you work today. In fact, I believe it is critical that traditional workers apply these concepts to help traditional companies innovate and thrive.

Okay, first off, those of you who I know too well should get your mind out of the gutter after reading that title and actually check out this article: 30 Things to Stop Doing to Yourself. You may have heard many of these suggestions before, but putting it into one list seems to make more of an impact. A lot of what is listed can fall into ‘live in the moment.’ This is something I’ve spent a lot of time on lately. Part of it comes from my yoga classes, where my instructor takes a meditative approach. Part of it comes from reading Zen Habits, a newly-discovered (for me) blog of thoughtful articles on simplifying life.

Whatever path you take to get there, I highly recommend investing time to take care of yourself. Get healthy in mind and body. Watch the stress disappear.

It’s been a while since I blogged about TED. Actually, it’s been a while since I blogged about anything. I recently got back into TED while stuck in Detroit airport for a 4 hour layover. The huge variety of topics in their video library makes it easy to absorb idle time.

What fascinated me most this time was a presentation by Aaron Koblin titled “Artfully visualizing our humanity.” It’s amazing to watch how he represents data and input from large groups of people. Two projects in particular stood out.

The first is a crowdsourced interpretation of a Johnny Cash video – The Johnny Cash Project – where people submit their own renderings of frames of the video that get pieced together. There are a lot of interactive features in this one, so spend some time playing with it.

The second project – The Wilderness Downtown – is another music video. This one asks you to enter the address of the home where you grew up. It uses this to grab satellite and Google street view photos that it integrates into a personalized video. It’s based on HTML 5, so make sure you have a current browser and reasonable computing power.